2026 SEGD Voices Webinar

Cybelle Jones

This SEGD Voices webinar explores how collaborating with User/Experts transforms exhibition design. Industry leaders share practical strategies for inclusive, accessible design that improves visitor experience by integrating lived experience into every stage of the process.

The Power of Lived Experience: User/Experts Informing Exhibition Design     

Thursday, March 26 | 12–1 PM ET

Designing with People, Not Just for Them

Accessibility continues to be one of the most requested and highly-utilized topics across SEGD’s learning programs.

Why? Because designers are recognizing that inclusive design isn’t just about compliance—it’s about creating better, more meaningful experiences for everyone.

This upcoming session gets to the heart of how actually to do that.

What This Session Is About

The Power of Lived Experience: User/Experts Informing Exhibition Design

This conversation focuses on a critical shift in practice:

  • Moving from designing for people with disabilities
  • To designing with them as collaborators

Exhibitions communicate a museum’s content to its audience. A significant portion of that audience uses varied means of communication, has a range of comprehension abilities and approaches to information, and has physical considerations for where and how content is presented. For an exhibition to inclusively convey information and engage all visitors in learning and enjoyment, it is essential that designers involve stakeholders with different abilities in the creation process—from concept through installation and beyond.

  • Read more Beth Ziebarth

    Beth Ziebarth

    Director, Office of Visitor Accessibility, Smithsonian Institution

  • Valerie Fletcher

    Executive Director, Institute for Human Centered Design

  • Nefertiti Matos Olivares headshot

    Nefertiti Matos Olivares

    Cultural and Digital Access Advisor, Descriptive Video Works / Social Audio Description Collective

  • Janice Majewski

    Janice Majewski

    Director, Inclusive Cultural Projects

Learn from Leaders Shaping the Field

This session brings together an extraordinary group of practitioners whose work spans policy, design, institutional leadership, and lived experience:

  • Beth Ziebarth (Director, Office of Visitor Accessibility, Smithsonian Institution)
    A leader advancing inclusive visitor experience across one of the world’s most influential cultural institutions.
  • Valerie Fletcher (Executive Director, Institute for Human Centered Design)
    A global voice in inclusive design, positioning accessibility as a driver of innovation and social equity.
  • Nefertiti Matos Olivares (Cultural and Digital Access Advisor, Descriptive Video Works / Social Audio Description Collective)
    A blind, bilingual experiential designer and User/Expert reframing accessibility as a creative strategy for deeper engagement and belonging.
  • Moderated by Jan Majewski (Director, Inclusive Cultural Projects, Institute for Human Centered Design)
    A pioneer in museum accessibility who helped shape national standards and foundational guidelines for inclusive exhibition design.

Session presenters will discuss the critical need and benefits of engaging directly with people in real environments—understanding how they gather information in museums and where barriers exist. The conversation will explore User/Expert testing and co-design through accessible, one-on-one sessions with design teams and facilitators, and offer ways designers can tap this expertise to create solutions that benefit many audiences.

Why You Should Attend

This is not theoretical—it’s about practical application and real-world impact.

You’ll learn how to:

  • Explain the importance and value of accessible, inclusive design to the broader field and to exhibition design specifically
  • Define who User/Experts are and understand their critical role in the design process
  • Begin applying these approaches within your own exhibition design and fabrication workflows

Why It Matters Now

Exhibitions are how museums communicate.
But not all visitors experience them the same way.

Designing with lived experience at the center doesn’t just improve accessibility—it raises the quality of the work for everyone.

Join Us

This session is part of the 2026 SEGD Voices series—a curated program of conversations led by SEGD’s Professional Practice Groups.

✔️ Free and open to both members and non-members
✔️ Curated by the Museum Exhibition Professional Practice Group
✔️ Designed to share real-world insight from leaders shaping the field

Register Now

One of SEGD’s most in-demand topics—don’t miss it.

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